Yemen between struggle for power, regional competition

MEDIA HENAN/NEWS DESK

The current Yemeni crisis dates back to 2011 when popular protests against former President Ali Abdullah Saleh began, with President Saleh giving up the presidency in 2012 under a power transfer agreement led by Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi.

The complications of the Yemeni crisis intensified in September 2014 after the Houthi forces took control of the capital Sana and the escape of President Abed Rabbo Mansour al-Hadi after he was forced in January to step down and first moved to Aden, southern Yemen, and after the Houthis approached the region headed to Saudi Arabia in early 2015.

The Houthis ... one of the main parties to the conflict

The Houthis are a movement against the Yemeni government and close to Iran. It is based in the northern province, Saada, a center known as the Houthis according to its founder Hussein al-Houthi, who was killed by Yemeni forces in 2004 and is called "Ansar Allah".

The Houthis established their movement in 1992 as a result of what they felt was marginalization and discrimination by the Yemeni government. They were considered a minority in Yemen and accounted for 5% of Yemen's population of 30 million and belonging to Zaydi community of Islam.

The Gulf and Iranian position on the Yemeni crisis

At the beginning of the military confrontations between the Yemeni parties, the Gulf states exercised a neutral stance due to their belief that the conflict would not break out of the Yemeni arena. The war will be confined to Reform Party and Ansar Allah. This will lead to weakening political Islam, specifically, the Yemeni Rally for Reform Party, which is accused of being close to the Muslim Brotherhood especially after the party, which has a large presence in different parts of Yemen, succeeded in recruiting thousands of its supporters within various government bodies, including the Ministries of Interior and Defense and local government bodies.

At the same time weakening Ansar Allah because of its ideological and political links with Iran, but the withdrawal of Reform Party from the military confrontation during the invasion of Sana by Ansar Allah is not the equation that was bet on by many political internal and external parties and enabled Ansar Allah at the same time ease of grabbing power and expanding into several areas in Yemen.

Iran has tried to exploit the survival of Yemen outside the system of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and the Yemeni circumstances fraught with sterile conflicts, to expand its influence and create a new political sphere of influence in the region as well as its influence in Iraq, Syria and South Lebanon. Iran provided political, diplomatic and the military support, to Ansar Allah as a sectarian minority with grievances in Yemen and has some doctrinal differences with the prevailing doctrine in Saudi Arabia.

These developments and the approach of the Houthi forces from the Saudi border prompted the Gulf States to recalculate their accounts, despite their differences, they succeeded in taking the decision to intervene under the umbrella of the so-called Arab Alliance except Qatar and Oman.

Saudi Arabia wants to end Iranian influence in Yemen, where Houthis are an Iranian arm like Hezbollah in Lebanon. In return for a peace deal and an end to its intensified air campaign against the Houthis, the Saudis demand that Houthis declare their secession from Tehran, hand over their weapons, provide assurances about Saudi border security and redefine themselves as a political party, however, it is highly unlikely that the Houthis will simply surrender.

International mediations to resolve the Yemeni crisis

UN- mediations efforts focused on the Yemeni crisis on a cease-fire between the Yemeni government and Houthis forces. The UN envoy to former Yemen, Ismail Weld Sheikh Ahmed, has worked on the understanding that once a temporary compromise is reached, a sustainable political solution would be taken place.

Over the past years, the situation on the ground has deteriorated dramatically. Today, nearly 7 million Yemenis are under the threat of starvation, and thousands of them have already died during the worst outbreak of cholera in history. Although the crisis is getting worse, efforts to stop fighting are decreasing.

The peace process in Yemen, at its inception, suffered from wrong assumptions and outdated analyzes, since the parties involved had little incentive to see the peace process even if millions of Yemenis had reached the brink of famine. All the major players in the conflict benefited from the war's profitable economy.

Many attempts to achieve peace, including those in June 2015 in Geneva, the September 2015 talks in Muscat and the December 2015 talks in Biel, Switzerland, failed. The Spring 2016 talks in Saudi Arabia were the first direct negotiations between the Saudis and Houthis, who suddenly agreed to ease the fighting and exchange prisoners. The two sides changed their speech. A Houthi spokesman publicly criticized Iran for using the war, while the Saudis began to describe the Houthis as a "movement" rather than "militant fighters."

Additional complications to resolve the Yemeni crisis

The negotiations did not include the participation of delegations from Hadi or Saleh camps. Thus, when the Saudis tried to pass the power stick to the Hadi government to pursue the negotiations in Kuwait, the momentum was lost. Perhaps as a response to his exclusion, President Hadi appointed a prominent Houthi enemy, General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, as vice president a week before the opening of the Kuwaiti talks, which contributed to their collapse at the end of August 2016. Two months later, Hadi rejected the new UN plan, thus the last effort made by outgoing US Secretary of State John Kerry in December failed.

Since  then, additional complications emerged and loyalties among different groups changed. The war has long involved more outsiders who are more in agreement about common adversaries than they agree on common interests, but these weak links have been shattered . Most of the Houthi-Saleh camp was split, with some loyalists joining the coalition. Similar divisions have emerged among members of the alliance itself, all of them anti-Houthi forces, but not all of them supporters of Hadi. In particular, the members of the Southern Transitional Council, backed by the UAE and the former governor of Aden, appointed by Hadi, Idrus al-Zubaidi, have repeatedly clashed with pro-Hadi forces. As a result, conflict and negotiations may not be within the simple framework of two main parties and their supporters.

The Houthis' intransigence and their refusal to surrender their weapons and give up power

In view of the record of previous talks between the Yemeni parties over a period of three years, all of which were in vain because of Houthis' insistence on their conditions that legitimized the coup, all these negotiations produced little result but gave a margin for political maneuvering and time. Sometimes the situation has been further complicated by the fact that the Houthis are betting on a military solution, prolonging the war and exhausting the alliance and Saudi Arabia in particular in a war of financial and military burdens.

This is what Iran wants from the Houthis who are waging a proxy war. The position of the Houthis in any political agreement will be governed by complacency or rejection by Iran, while Iran sees that the Houthis can stand firm and continue to play the role of the proxy more and get a half victory.

The Houthis use the human file

The Houthis hope for more international pressure on the Arab Alliance to end the war in Yemen through the humanitarian file and to show a large increase in the number of civilian casualties caused by the bombing of the Arab coalition aircraft, the most recent targeting a passenger bus in Saada province, which killed about 47 people, mostly children, and dozens  wounded.

It was clear that Houthis attempt to bargain with the blood of the civilian victims to draw international sympathy to put pressure  on the coalition when trying to fabricate the massacre of Hodeidah after targeting a hospital and a fish market in the city with mortar shells in conjunction with the meeting of the Security Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York on Yemen in order to earn points in the humanitarian file against the coalition and ousted it from the moral legitimacy of its military intervention in Yemen, but the evidence of the massacre that caused the lives of dozens of civilians was the fingerprints of the real actor (Houthis.)

There is no possibility for the success of the next discussions

UN envoy to the United Nations, Martin Griffith, who is the third UN special envoy to Yemen since the start of the conflict in March 2015, made a statement in a few weeks ago that the talks will focus on a number of outstanding issues in the Yemeni issue, a government of national unity representing a period of transition and disarmament of the Houthis, where he said, "essentially, we are trying to reach a consensus that the government of Yemen and Ansar Allah on the issues necessary to stop the war and agree on a government of national unity with the participation of all."

Hence, the probability of success of the talks scheduled for next month between the Yemeni government and the Houthi forces in Geneva may be non-existent, especially since the wording declared by the United Nations is no different from the previous one.

A.H

ANHA